bdgiantman2

And off to the races he goes again!! Another amazing miniature ship model already in the makings. I am looking forward to following this one as much as Genesis. By the way, nice job making those two blisters on either side of the bridge. These two power yachts are real beauties. 

This is something and a half! I would love to see this beauty  with my own eyes. I still can't believe this is possible to create!  You are TRUE MASTER mate! So inspiring. CONGRATS 

Is it Alaskan yellow cedar? Both look good. 
Steve

Beautiful work Giampiero. I Have a question about the quote above, how you made the tools from the old saw blades. You formed it with a disk? Like a disk attached to a dremel or something similar? I do not quite understand..  And how often do you have to run over the material with your tool before it is in its final shape?
 
Hope you have the time to answer some day:)
 
regards,
 
Oystein Klausen

Thanks for the info, gentlemen. 

Thanks for the info, gentlemen. 

My longboat is already cedar.  The 1/2" scale kit.  I have 3 in stock.  
 
Some elements are better suited for other woods however.  I am certain the ships wheel could be made out of cedar.  The same is true for the lantern and a few other things.  But having said this, the color difference can barely be noticed.  In fact, in many cases you could never tell the difference between box and cedar on the model.
 
If you look at the Medway Longboat, the molding and a few other elements are boxwood rather than cedar.  You cant tell and the boxwood is best suited for scraping molding.  I plan to use it for such details on this model too.
 
For example....the molding, ships wheel, stern and quarter gallery windows.  The beauty of cedar is that it is not so different than boxwood that it cant be mixed on one project without being noticeable in order to take advantage of the best qualities of each of them. 
 
The Winnie will have a longboat and a Pinnace.  These will be afded and designed much later.  They will be very simular ti the two ships boats I made for Confederacy.

Hello Chuck, as usual I am late to the party, oh well. Your model here is absolutely beautiful and you are very quickly making a convert out of me to use Yellow Ceder for my next project. A question I would like to ask if I may.  I am considering adding a model of the Long Boat to go with the ship I plan to build next. By chance do you plan to offer the Long Boat kit out of Ceder as well as the ships wheel kit? Major potential purchases coming up. Keep up the great model building as well as supply store.
 
Brian D

Hello Chuck, as usual I am late to the party, oh well. Your model here is absolutely beautiful and you are very quickly making a convert out of me to use Yellow Ceder for my next project. A question I would like to ask if I may.  I am considering adding a model of the Long Boat to go with the ship I plan to build next. By chance do you plan to offer the Long Boat kit out of Ceder as well as the ships wheel kit? Major potential purchases coming up. Keep up the great model building as well as supply store.
 
Brian D

Hello,
many thanks to you all for the LIKES.
 
Currently I am still working on the shrouds of the mainmast.
For this I show some pictures serving the shrouds and attaching of the dead eyes.



Furthermore, you can see a comparsion with an original seizing


Here are some pictures of the current status:



 

Nice details; have you had any sales enquiries yet - I am sure there are a few billionaires who would like to add this to their toy collection.
 
Ooops, sorry, forgot this was a model.
 
cheers
 
Pat

The construction report is continued with the rigging of the bowsprit.
It starts with the jib boom footropes.
The jib boom footropes, usually fitted in pairs. They were secured to the 
bowsprit cap.
Here are some pictures:

Build log 16 – Leviathan
 
Yes, Keith, it is Sunday and here is another installment.  Glad you are enjoying them.
Thanks to all for the compliments and comments.  A lot of the fun of doing these logs are the interactions between all the great friends across the globe.
 
We move on now to the top of the bridge deck.  Here the structural revisions from the troop ship to the liner are the greatest.  Mostly this has to do with the reduction in ventilation systems and their upgrades.  The plans for the area were abstracted from separate plans of both the troop ship and the liner.  I then halved them and combined the halves to make one plan for the model.

I started with the troop ship side.  I located a photo taken from the foremast lookout platform which shows the area, especially the large air intake structure and the strange square construction on top.  It also shows most of the deck details on the aft portion of the deck.

Most of the details in this area are similar to the blowers and ductwork which were made for other areas, and the techniques used were the same.

In addition to the blowers and ducts there are several cylindrical tanks for liquids, although I do not know what the fluids were.  A large flat skylight will have to be cut in half, but two smaller ones exist in both incarnations, so they were made in full.

In this detail photo, probably taken while she was being converted to the troop ship, the entire intake trunk can be seen, along with the two lookout houses to either side, and that square construction in the center.   I had no notion of what this was, until I read the official history of the ship.  It turns out that this is a platform for a large rangefinder for the 6 inch guns that the ship carried.  I found drawings of several types and will probably try to make something convincing later on.

From below the platforms and railings of the lookout sheds can be seen, as well as the strange angled sides of the rangefinder house.

The intake structure started with a central wooden block for the body of the intake trunk, with thin vertical separators as seen in the photos.  The curved end was carved from a block of basswood.

After priming in dark grey it was evident that the intake ports were too simple and looked wrong.  I added shallower dividers and painted the interiors flat black, which improved things a lot.

The lookout house and its walkway were built up out of cherry veneer with a rounded basswood top and an “X” frame PE support taken from from the spares box.  Here they are being test fit.

The rangefinder house was pieced together with styrene cut and fit.  I thought that the angled sides would be more of a problem, but I sanded bevels into wide strips of plastic and welded them together with liquid cement.  The three required pieces were cut off and the mating corners beveled until they formed an open rectangle.  Cap pieces top and bottom were added, then mated to the solid floor. 

A paper floor was cut and fit inside, with PE supports cut and fit underneath.  The ‘cut’ edges were painted red to show the line of cleavage.  Note to self – clean up the camo paint inside the intake.  Damn, these digital closeups show everything!

Viewed from aft, the walkway and railing can be better seen.

Here is the completed troop ship flying bridge.   Note that the railing around the forward edge is solid and has the same ‘vee’ shape as the rangefinder house. 

The liner side is dominated by white fixtures, including four large rectangular features which I take to be air intakes.  These would not have to be be so large since the liner had a greatly reduced population.  They look to have solid bases, an open middle intake section with thin stanchions that support the roof.  There are shutters all around that could close off the opening in foul weather.  I would love to know if my interpretation is correct.

They were built up with a sheathed basswood base, a middle section with an internal support and PE ladders turned sideways to represent the stanchions.  Tiny shutters of .010” plastic were cut and delicately glued in place. 

Here is the combined area.  On the liner side the railing is not solid, but is strong 4-bar PE with a wooden caprail and a paper strip to simulate the canvas wind screen.  I also added a Bluejacket binnacle along the centerline.  There is some navigational device there in one of the photos, but I could not make out which it was, so this is a bit of a guess.

Lastly, the centerline shot.

Next week is Passover, so I probably will not get to put together a post. 
 
So a very Happy Pesach to all my tribe, and Happy Easter or other spring festival of your choice to everyone else!
 
Dan
14.psd

Yelp they look like a neighborhood mob with their colored spiky hairdos looking for someone to mug! I have no idea what size the cranes are but if the skull is left over from your last siege and is anywhere close to life size they are pretty large, (And like all your work impressive) I bet they look like landing trees to the Couch Back Gang. 

I have admired your Bismarck all along. I will be following this one with a lot of interest, too.
 
Yves

Its wierd its square. I know murphy very well.... not a nice guy. 

If I had to guess what that stick is, it's possible it's flag pole.  Otherwise, maybe it's a tool for installing the life rings? Or installing the portholes?   Just don't toss it out because Murphy will come laughing at you when you realize what it was and it's long gone.

Evening, 
Good day at work today, tomorrow is Friday, feelin good heading into the weekend.
 
Time for an update. 
I'm basically done with the Capstan, just needs some touch up's. 
Still staying with the darker color scheme.
I like it......it just needed something.....extra. 
Way in the back of my head an idea said to wrap some brass around the edges.
Just to give it a little shine. Don't know why, just thought it would look good.
It'll probably just blend into the deck to the casual observer.

Took a good length of extra strip brass and pre formed it around the edge first then glued. 

A little wobbly, but not bad. 

Then the top edge got its brass. 

I think it looks good. 
Really defines the edge of the Capstan. 
I may omit the star on top. I've tried hand painting it, stencil, straight edges.....everything and it looks horrible. 

Tom E 
 
 

Wow, you must have made a trip to Monaco! That’s quite the collection of super yachts!
 
looking great; it’s fun to see them all together.

Work continues today.  The planes dollys are folded and soon to be painted...grey?


next i installed the planes cockpits


ya know what... in the spirit of getting this done and since the other side of the ship wont be veiwable I think I might just do 1 arado.  

anyhoo the paint is ready to go. I hope model air airbrushes ok. 

I started to bounce around. I cut out and folded the stairways.  And some life rings to possibly go ontop of the launches. 

thats about it for today. Oh and my new favorite tool. These toe nail clippers are wonderfull! 

untill tomorrow...
 

And it tastes very very very good better than popcorn even.

Your work at the ropewalk is becoming as fine as your detailed brass work, Johann. You have set yourself a very high standard ...

Hello Marcus,
 
I remember having the same issue as you of having difficulty uploading pictures from my Android phone onto this site. It seems that the size of picture that the phone takes is too big or too many pixels for this site to accommodate.  After being given an old digital camera, the problem ended for me. Another solution you can try to do is to e-mail yourself the pictures and then using a computer upload the pictures onto your forum.
 
Brian

Hello Marcus,
 
I remember having the same issue as you of having difficulty uploading pictures from my Android phone onto this site. It seems that the size of picture that the phone takes is too big or too many pixels for this site to accommodate.  After being given an old digital camera, the problem ended for me. Another solution you can try to do is to e-mail yourself the pictures and then using a computer upload the pictures onto your forum.
 
Brian

Channell, great job on the building of those anti-aircraft guns for your Bismarck model. I have to admit I am amazed at the detail difference when making the guns with the photo-etched metal. Keep up the great blog.
 
Brian